Rhett Ayers Butler
In the wake of Australia’s 2019–20 “Black Summer” bushfires, few questions have proved as persistent as how to coexist with fire on a warming continent. Governments promise resilience, communities demand safety, and industries facing shrinking markets search for new roles. Out of this convergence has emerged a flashpoint: the thinning of native forests. Mechanical thinning [Continue reading]
José Albino Cañas Ramírez did not die in a war zone, though war had shaped the place where he lived. He was shot at his home in the community of Portachuelo, in Colombia’s Caldas department, on the evening of February 16th. Two men came to the shop he ran from his house, opened fire, and [Continue reading]
A deceptively simple question underlies many global environmental policies: where, exactly, are the world’s forests? A new study suggests the answer depends heavily on which map one consults—and that the differences are large enough to reshape climate targets, conservation priorities, and development spending. Researchers Sarah Castle, Peter Newton, Johan Oldekop, Kathy Baylis, and Daniel Miller [Continue reading]
Coral reefs are among the most productive ecosystems on Earth, built slowly by animals that resemble plants. Each coral polyp hosts microscopic algae that convert sunlight into energy. When ocean temperatures rise, this partnership breaks down. The coral expels the algae, loses its color, and turns white — a process known as bleaching. The coral [Continue reading]
Rainfall is often treated as a gift of geography — a function of latitude, oceans, and atmospheric circulation. Research increasingly suggests that in the tropics it is also a product of ecosystems. Forests do not merely receive rain; they help generate it, regulate its distribution, and sustain the conditions that allow it to persist. A [Continue reading]
For decades, a dominant argument for protecting forests has focused on carbon. Trees absorb carbon dioxide, store it in wood and soils, and slow the accumulation of greenhouse gases. A new scientific review argues this emphasis overlooks other ways forests shape climate and human well-being. Forests are not only a mitigation tool for the future [Continue reading]
Lisa Miller did not come to biodiversity finance through markets or models. She came through animals. Growing up in Australia, her interest in wildlife was personal and specific, long before conservation became a policy debate or an investment theme. That early pull led her to study zoology and later to work at the Australian Museum, [Continue reading]
For most of the 20th century, the fate of whales was treated as an industrial question. How many could be taken, how fast, and by whom. Biology entered the discussion late. Ethics later still. By the time international negotiations began to seriously address the problem, many whale populations had already been reduced to remnants of [Continue reading]
It is tempting, when thinking about change, to look for the actor at the center of the story. The donor whose gift made something possible. The organization whose strategy unlocked progress. The individual whose decision altered a course of events. These figures are easy to name and easier still to photograph. They offer a sense [Continue reading]
Division was four years old when he died, a young age even by the shortened standards now applied to North Atlantic right whales. His body was found in late January, adrift off the coast of North Carolina. The weather was too dangerous for anything more than confirmation. By then, the cause was already understood. He [Continue reading]
The Turtle Survival Center sits far from the places where most turtles are lost. That distance is part of its purpose. The facility, run by the Turtle Survival Alliance, exists to buy time for species that no longer have much of it. Founded in 2013 in South Carolina, the center functions as a high-security refuge [Continue reading]
Tree planting has become a favored response to environmental loss. Governments, companies, and philanthropies announce large targets with reassuring round numbers. Forests, after all, store carbon, shelter wildlife, and support livelihoods. Yet the details matter. Planting the wrong species, or planting trees where forests did not exist, can undermine both biodiversity and climate goals. That [Continue reading]
Anyone who looks at a social media feed with any regularity is likely familiar with the deluge of fabricated images and videos now circulating online. Some are harmless curiosities (other than the resource use). Others are more troubling. Among the most consequential are AI-generated depictions of wildlife, which are beginning to distort how people understand [Continue reading]
Author’s note (March 5, 2026): Questions have been raised about the validity of an image included in the Biotropica paper. The authors state that they analyzed the image’s metadata and ran it through an AI detector, but independent analysis has questioned its origin. On India’s railways, stowaways are not limited to ticketless passengers. Some arrive [Continue reading]
For Isabel Esterman, journalism’s influence is often cumulative. It comes from staying with a subject long enough for the evidence to become harder to ignore. “It’s not one story,” she says. “It’s this collective body of reporting, and staying on it has been significant.” That idea runs through her work at Mongabay, where she has [Continue reading]
I am often asked what Mongabay’s legacy is, or what it might turn out to be. The question usually comes with an assumption that a quarter-century of publishing should yield a tidy answer. It does not. Mongabay did not begin with a theory of media change, nor with an ambition to redefine environmental journalism. It [Continue reading]
In 2025, Mongabay reached 111 million unique visitors through our websites, a 46% increase over the previous year. That figure captures direct readership only. It excludes circulation through social media, messaging apps, and republication by more than 100 partner outlets, all of which extend the audience well beyond what web analytics record. Even so, the [Continue reading]
For most of modern history, the open ocean has been treated as a place apart. Beyond the 200-nautical-mile limits of national jurisdiction, it was governed by custom, fragmented rules, and the assumption that what lay far offshore was too vast to manage and too resilient to exhaust. That assumption has worn thin. Fishing fleets now [Continue reading]
For much of South America’s history, the arrival of a missionary has carried two reputations at once. One is charitable: a figure with medicine, schooling, and a language of human dignity in places where the state is often absent. The other is coercive: an agent of conversion and acculturation, sometimes entangled with land seizures, forced [Continue reading]
Singapore sells itself as an engineered miracle: a dense city that works, where heat, rain, and scarcity are managed rather than endured. Greenery is part of that bargain. Trees soften the concrete and help make the place livable, but they are also a kind of civic language. They signal order, foresight, and the idea that [Continue reading]
In most forests, a visitor’s eye is trained on what can be reached. The trunk can be measured. The leaves can be plucked. A specimen can be pressed, labeled, and filed away. Yet the largest share of life in a tropical rainforest hangs overhead, in a zone of light, wind, and constant exchange. For much [Continue reading]
For a small country, Belize has long carried an outsized reputation among people who care about water. Its flats and mangroves, its reef and river systems, have drawn anglers and naturalists who come for beauty but stay, if they are paying attention, for the fragile bargain that keeps such places alive. Tourism can finance protection. [Continue reading]
Conservation has never lacked alarming facts. What it increasingly lacks is attention. After years of grim headlines, many people do not just feel sad. They disengage. They stop reading, stop donating, and in some cases stop believing that anything meaningful can still be done. That reality is no longer a side issue for the movement. [Continue reading]
Doug McConnell spent much of his adult life doing something that sounds simple and is not: he helped people look closely at the places where they lived. For decades he turned Northern California’s open spaces, back roads, and overlooked corners into familiar destinations people came to recognize and talk about, shown not as scenery but [Continue reading]
In parts of Indonesian Borneo, forests endure not because they are fenced or regulated, but because they are feared. Among the Iban people of Sungai Utik, large strangler fig trees are believed to house spirits that can mislead, sicken, or kill those who disturb them. The belief is not abstract. It is anchored in stories, [Continue reading]